Those Elder Days

A 8216;new8217; Tolkien is marvelous enough. But it really stands among his best

Thirty-four years after Tolkien8217;s death, here is a new book, put together and edited by his son and literary executor Christopher Tolkien, that brings us a bleak story of evil and heroism set in the Elder Days. The story was begun by Tolkien at the end of the First World War in which he fought, and went through several versions, but was never quite finished by him. Yet it was to become the overarching theme of all his later work on Middle Earth. Weaving the narrative together from incomplete versions that include a chapter of The Silmarillion, The Book of Lost Tales and parts of narrative poems, Christopher Tolkien brings us the tragic story of Turin 8220;Turambar8221; 8220;Master of Fate8221; and his sister Nienor 8220;Mourning8221;, also known as Niniel, 8220;Maid of Tears8221;.

The story begins six and a half thousand years before the Council of Elrond was held in Rivendell, when Hurin Thalion the Steadfast, the mortal Lord of Dor-lomin, defies Morgoth, the Black Enemy and first Dark Lord. This epic confrontation, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears is bitter and long, and the opponents of the Dark Lord fight with desperate heroism, but they are doomed: 8220;Last of all Hurin stood alone.8221; Morgoth orders Hurin to be captured alive. 8220;You are not the Lord of Men, and shall not be,8221; says Hurin defiantly to Morgoth before the Dark Lord binds him up and curses him with the most terrible curse of all, 8220;to see with Morgoth8217;s eyes8221;. Hurin is condemned to see this distorted version of the world until the end.

Christopher Tolkien8217;s introduction tells us about the great country of Beleriand in the Elder Days, at the time of Turin8217;s birth, 8220;a time unimaginably remote8221;. Treebeard sings of this age and those lands much later as he carries the hobbits Merry and Pippin in his arms: 8220;Ah! The wind and the whiteness and the black branches of Winter upon Orad-na-Thon!/ My voice went up and sang in the sky/ And now all those lands lie under the wave8230;.8221;

In the appendix, which describes the evolution of the story from various incomplete manuscripts and gives us a unique glimpse into Tolkien8217;s creative process, the editor recalls his earlier description of the dense texture of The Silmarillion, 8220;its suggestion of ages of poetry and 8216;lore8217; behind it8230; a sense of 8216;untold tales8217;, even in the telling of them.8221; The Children of Hurin is similarly textured, vast in scale, tragic in its sweep, and layered with a sense of untold tales. Read as a part of Tolkien8217;s entire work, we see how a servant of the Dark Lord can grow in fortune and scale to become darker than his evil master; how a man destined for great things can make rash, impulsive decisions that will cost him his destiny; and how an entire world can be diminished into a pale shadow of its old self. Compassionate in its descriptions of moral choices and human mistakes, the story is lit up by the humanity of its characters and the loveliness of Tolkien8217;s prose.
Accompanied by Alan Lee8217;s dramatic illustrations, 8220;Narn I Chin Hurin8221; stands among the best of Tolkien8217;s work.